


Memento Mori

by OmegaZeta5



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Angst and Feels, Blood and Violence, F/M, Pre-Calamity Ganon, The Great Calamity (Legend of Zelda)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:47:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27194641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OmegaZeta5/pseuds/OmegaZeta5
Summary: There was nothing and then there is everything.Everything but time.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 81





	Memento Mori

**Author's Note:**

> Objective: Survive

The convoy’s burning. 

It’s the first thing Link sees when Zelda shakes him awake. Fist buried in the dirt, the world bending and waning as he shakes the iron out of his bones. He moves only to grunt back into a crouch. Something at his side. Tunic’s charred there, gaping. His fingers don’t go beyond the fabric. He takes in a purposeful breath that leaves him sputtering and hacking with Zelda’s hand on his back, her form hugged to his. Air’s thick, heavy. Black. Glimpses of a splintered wheel here, an overturned carriage there. Hazy flames and the shapeless lumps in between. Some of them are still moving. 

“What happened?” Grit teeth, two words leave his stomach heaving. He swallows the bile. Her hand’s tight around his shoulder. 

“They’re razing the fields.” 

She doesn’t look away from the sky. Link follows. Clouds drenched in purple sea, stewing and churning and boiling. The sun’s gone. A shadow like a giant bird drifting listlessly through the gunk. A sound like a pin dropping and there’s a flash of blue from its beak. The impact forces them off the ground for a moment, sends a tremor through the trees. Somewhere else is burning now. The corpse of a Divine Beast drifts across. 

“We were caught in the line of fire,” she says, “I think.” 

“All of them?” The question escapes him as fast as it comes. 

“What?” 

Her voice is far away and she won’t stop looking up. Link steels himself. 

“They all turned?”

Her chin quivers. “I don’t know.” 

Link takes her arm back from over his shoulder, fumbles with her hand and drops the question. The answer should be obvious to him anyhow. He staggers to his feet and clenches through the searing heat at his side, hunched over and then straight. It’s an effort to pull her up with him. 

“We need to go.” 

She doesn’t respond. 

“Zelda.” Just the slightest bit firmer, the control twisting the nonexistent knife at his side. She turns at his hiss more than his words, blinks her way back to reality. 

“You’re hurt.” Small, the emotion trickling back in. 

“I’m breathing.” 

Her inhale's shaky, “Link, you’re-” 

“Move.” 

He tugs her forward without waiting for a response. They were flung a ways back. They need to get out of this smoke. Past the convoy, what’s left of it. Through the woods, he knows the way. Thank Hylia he does. He has to. They have to reach the fort. There’s nowhere left to go. This collective moaning in the air, low and then they’re wading through the wood and the flames and the carcasses. Soldiers. Some of them haven’t passed on yet. Swords and lances and halberds tossed about like silver fish on a black shore. Link bends down. Chipped shield, good for another few blows. He straps it on without missing a step. 

Her hand’s at her mouth. She won’t look away. She needs to. It’ll just slow them down. He thinks to tell her that but then she stops moving and the suddenness of it jerks him back. No time, no time. He snaps his head back only to see the charred mess pulling at her dress. 

“ _ Your Highnessss- _ ” 

Guttural groan, spilling and crumbling. Boy, couldn’t have been older than him. His skin comes off on her dress. 

Her eyes are so soft and she leans the slightest bit down, hand stretched out. Like she can touch him and make it all go away. 

“Zelda,” Link finally manages. Each snap of a twig or rustle of a leaf sends his head in all directions. 

“We have to help them,” she whispers. Panicked, some of the life back in her. Link focuses on her and there’s a wetness there, in the green. 

“There’s no helping them.” 

He says this without looking at the soldier. At the boy. He can’t look at any of them for more than a second. He’s seen this. Time and time again, he knows it. He can’t see it now? 

“I- I can-” 

But she can’t do anything. He knows that’s what she thinks, it’s there in the crack of her voice. There’s something to say, some collection of words to offer. Something sweet and nurturing. Every minute he’s here is another minute she is. 

“Come on. Get behind me.” 

“Link, they’re  _ dying _ -” A hushed wail that shudders out of her. The boy moans on the ground. Link clenches his jaw, pushes down the burning in his throat. He pulls harder and whatever fight still there leaves her in the motion. Muted crunch beneath them, dirt and leaves and ash. A single cold prick, right on Link’s nose. Rain. More pepper his face and each is a shock to the pores, the blood. The mind.

* * *

“I don’t understand him,” she said, sitting smug on the bench in the courtyard. “My father, that is.” 

She was out there a lot, those days. Link just stood a few paces behind and watched the regiments go about their business. Early morning, running through their drills. He used to be one of them. What he was after Korok Forest was anyone’s guess. Zelda squirmed in her seat. 

“It’s inefficient. What’s the use in standard infantry these days? Our ancestors have left us an entire arsenal of autonomous soldiers.” 

An arsenal they can’t use. Link kept his mouth shut, those days. It was beyond him, this talk of machines and ancestry. It was all beyond him and he ought to keep it that way. He watched the boys make their laps around the courtyard. He knew some of them. They were friends. If he walked out there, how many would recognize him? 

“Don’t you agree?” 

Snide tone. He didn’t match her glare. Rule number one, never look the princess in the eye. Number two, never let her leave yours. He tried to wrap his head around that. 

She shook her head, the frustration radiating off her. “Of course you don’t. Where would you be if we had what we needed? Perhaps there wouldn’t even be a point in the Sword. None at all. Then there wouldn’t be a point in you.” 

It was like that often in the mornings. The words were almost not words at that point and there was nothing in Link, no spite, no rebuttal. There is a Sword, he thought. There is a Sword and there is a me and there is a her. The Sword is meant to cut. She is meant to be. I am meant to be as well but it is a different kind of being. I stand and cut the things that need cutting and she stands back and tries not to get cut herself. Anything else was unnecessary. 

“Inefficient.” The word slipped and so did his eyes. The shocked face of the girl with her tongue tied by something he did not mean the way she thought he did. She shifted back in her seat, head held high and away so he couldn’t see her expression. Gazing at the regiments. 

“Such a waste,” she sighed, her tone unknowable. “We don’t need them here.”

* * *

“We can’t leave them,” Zelda cries against the smoke and the flames. 

“We have to.” 

“ _ Don’t, _ ” croaking voice, “ _ do n’t… _ ”

“I promise,” she’s sobbing and Link’s pulling, “I promise we’ll come back for you!”

He drags her into the thicket. His boots slap the ground, wet and plodding and tossing dark stuff everywhere. His breath’s loud, burns his nose. Her’s is louder. 

“I promise I promise I promise I promise Ipromise _ Ipromise _ -” 

He almost stops. Not enough time, too many thoughts to sort through. What can he do to root her here, in this moment with him? Words. They lose him and they would lose her if he said them. All they can do is go. The fort is waiting. Then he can say all that is to be said and more than he can ever say. They just have to get there. 

And if the fort’s overrun? 

Something crashing in the woods. Zelda gasps, suddenly here, suddenly now. Link looks to either side of him. Rows and rows passing them by, all wood and oak and solid. 

Then the snarling. The spit-drenched gibbering with the milky goo running over thick lips and stubby chins. Eyes cracked blue and moldy yellow, here and there and everywhere, peering out at them in the dark. Chasing, waiting. Link grits his teeth. The world burns and they come running with their hands out, more patient than ever. 

He’s going too fast. He can hear her feet slipping through the mud. Hoots and hollers in the dark. Come on. Let’s get this over with. 

The big Hinox crashes to a stop in front of them and their feet skid against the muck. Great bulbous yellow with a black dot in the center, leering down at them. Steaming tongue running over the teeth with the holes in them. In their way. 

The shadows pen them in. Bokoblin-Moblin stew pouring over the brims of the thicket, claws and teeth all quaking in anticipation. The Sword’s in Link’s hand. Tightening the grip sends a fresh wave of pain up his arm, through everything. He kills his expression, his shield hand covers her. 

“Get behind me.”

* * *

Zelda wordlessly shoved past him in the canyon with the sunlight trickling through the crack. Slate tucked in the crook of her arm, eyes wide and devoid of any of the fear that’d filled them just moments earlier. She stared at the dying Lynel crumpled across the sandstone. Mangled legs with the hooves stiff in the air. Bright red gashes, criss-crossed all over the dark muscle. Its eyes were dull on her and the breathing slow. The one arm it had left still reached out for its sword laying just a few feet away. Link was cleaning his. 

She inched closer and jumped when the Lynel snorted a heavier breath than the rest. 

“I mean it,” Link said, “Get behind me. Thing’s still dangerous.” 

Zelda looked back at him. Mystifying face, none of the scorn or bewilderment there. She was beginning to pull that one on him a lot, lately. It shut him up. These days where he had more to say. Anything to say at all was more to say. He was not meant for saying. Maybe she was trying to tell him that. Maybe she was telling him to keep going. Too many maybes lately. She turned to the Lynel again. 

“Does it have to be this way?” 

Gentle. He did not know if he was supposed to hear it.

She huffed without turning around. “I know it does. This nature, this instinct. I can’t do a thing about it.” 

The Lynel stared. Beady eyes glinting with natural-born hate, even now. She didn’t flinch. 

“All things deserve to be, don’t they? It’s no privilege. This right to live.” 

“They try to kill you,” Link said. He never sounded as sure as he wanted to, talking to her. “Every single one. They try to kill anybody.” 

“They know to kill. Perhaps they’ll never know anything else, no matter what anyone does. I just…” 

Her shoulders fell. Such a gentle tone. He didn’t hear it like that often. It always felt like a thing not meant for him to hear but he was always the only one around to ever hear it. One last shudder and the Lynel went, the life sighing out of it and the eyes blank. Zelda shivered, dipped her chin low. Her eyes squeezed shut as tight as her fists. Link watched the curtain of dust carried down the yellow light of the canyon. 

“Maybe they will. Maybe someday.” 

She looked at him again. Soft cheeks, warm pools of green. Her head went low. 

“You don’t have to humor me.” The faint bitterness there. 

“I mean it.” He did. Link blinked at his own words. 

That treasure of an expression. She held it on him longer now. “Thank you.”

* * *

The Hinox is the last to fall. Link’s up on its face, drives the blade down again and again. His side screams. He does not. The Hinox doesn’t get up again. None of them do. Link’s feet squelch the ground and he scans the woods. She’s curled up against a tree trunk, hugging her knees to her chest. The hair a curtain over her face. Her arms won’t stop shaking. The Sword goes on his back. 

They’ve been in one spot for too long. His hands are slow on her anyway. Up her arms, brushing her hair back. Fresh movements, only just learned this past season. Her gaze stays where it is, down and on something that poisons her with each passing second. Opal eyes glittering out from the dirt and the grime. Goddess, when’d that happen? How could he let that happen?

He’s wiping it off her. Rubbing her face. He smudges purple Hinox blood beneath her eye with his thumb. The rain swirls it all together, black and brown and purple trickling off her. He’s not meant for cleaning things. He ruins them. He is for standing, cutting. He shouldn’t touch her. He knew that when she’d started letting him. She shouldn’t touch him. She would anyway. 

Her hand grabs his just as it falls from her face. Tight, desperate squeeze. 

“I can’t stop.” 

Link focuses and she’s looking at him now. Pleading. 

“I can’t. I can’t stop thinking.” 

“About what?” Quiet, unhurried tone. They should hurry. He can’t help his voice either way. Her eyelashes flutter, mouth trembling. 

“I don’t want to go.” 

She falls apart. He takes her in like it’s what he was put here for, seamless and smooth. Her head’s tucked below his chin, shaking and breathing into his chest with his arms around her. 

“There’s so much,” she stammers, “So much left to see.” 

“You’ll be there. This will all end and you’ll see everything. I’ll get you there.” 

“They won’t.” 

The burning ache in his throat, there again. Maybe it never left. He can’t think about them now. All smiles and laughs and reassurances. Divine corpses burning the land.

“I did that to them. I killed them.” 

Choked whispers. His hand on her back soothes them into mumbles. His chest is damp in a way the rain pelting around them can’t make. 

“You didn’t kill them.”

“I’m killing you.” 

He laughs, a sharp bark. His side churns. He doesn’t care. How could she ever think that?

* * *

“This heat’s killing me,” she said. 

Summer’d brought it on, this lavender scent that wafted over the fields, soaked itself in everything. In her. He’d only meant to rest for a minute, stand guard from the shade of the chestnut tree. His eyes shut eventually, of course. They opened to a sparkling green. 

Link grumbled, shifted in his spot. “What time is it?” 

A smile flirt across her face. Her eyes didn’t leave him. “Early enough. I’m not expected back for another hour or so.” 

He processed it. Moved to get up only for nimble fingers to gently nudge him back down. 

“Come on,” he said, “It’s an hour’s walk back.” 

“They won’t miss us.” 

He laughed. “You’re the princess.” 

“Bully.” 

“The heat’s killing you. You said that.” 

“Let it kill the both of us.” 

He felt her knee brushed up against his hip. He was not meant to feel. A cool finger traced up his jaw, coaxing out a sigh that drifted into hers. She settled against him and her head dipped, nuzzled against his chest.

* * *

Link sees the blinking red target dot on her cheek and the chipped shield goes up just as the laser comes. Flash of starlight shatters the steel and turns the dark into day for a second and both of them fall back onto the mud. Fresh dose of acrid smoke, a tree burning somewhere, maybe more. He wobbles back up, reaches blindly. He finds her.

And then they run. Gravel in his lungs, glass digging in his throat. His side’s opened up, something fresh trickling out the hole in his tunic. The rain chills everything and he can’t feel any of it. He’s not meant to feel. Not then, not now. Why did he let himself feel? The rain’s the world, silver and black and rotting. He’s not seeing it anymore. 

Her hair, loose and soft in his fingers. The light fuzz on her skin, her arms, her cheeks. Her breath on his, strawberries. The lavender that wrapped him up that day, that day when he knew. That moment that was not supposed to be a moment, one unmeant thing among countless others, him and her beneath that tree on a summer’s day. He knew he could not go back to how he was before. He didn’t want to. He wasn’t living back then, standing, cutting. She got him to look. Talk, smile, sigh, learn. Breathe. 

Spiders. Monolithic spiders with the glowing eyes and the red lines shooting everywhere and Link’s here again in the world that’s a purple dead blur past them through the forest. His legs are burning away. She must be worse. Almost there. Just a little more, promise. A little further. 

They slow down as they reach the clearing. The edge of the forest sprawls out onto the field below. Their hands drop, their chests rising and falling and straining for the air. There it is. That stretch of rock and iron and stone. There’s the fort. 

There’s the Guardians. 

A sea of gears and shafts and legs and eyes. Jerking this way and that, locking onto them. This great mass of blue and red, gloating. 

“Stay here. Go back, hide in the trees. Go left, follow the stones. Stay right here, I’ll draw them off to the east-” 

“Link.” 

Calm. Calm as the hand loose in his grip. Spent. Done. Wrong. How can she be so calm when there is so much wrong? All the rain, the muck, the flames. The dead. All of that to stop right here. As far as they go. Right there. They can see it right there. A few hundred meters. 

She gets it, he thinks. That’s it. She knows. She knew the whole time. It knocked her down and choked her and babbled nonsense into her but she knew before you did and she knows better than you now. She always did. You only know as much as you know because you stood around her all that time. Those learned looks, words, tastes. You were learning so  _ fast _ too, weren't you? You both were. Years of scorn and nothing and then you up and spilled everything. Not everything. You'd shaved the surfaces off each other. Ready to know. To really know. You should have spilled sooner. 

It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. Nothing went the way they said it would. Now they’re all gone. Gone and everything else will go before you ever had a chance to learn it. You learned a little, though. You learned more than other people did. You can’t complain. It was good. It was known. Even in the early days, when she couldn’t stand you standing there and you couldn’t see her seeing you. Rules one and two. But then you saw her. She let you see her. You can’t complain about any of it. 

I did get it, he thinks. I got it the moment I woke up and the world was burning. I thought I could keep her from burning, too.

More eyes. If he moves then they move. They’ll be on them as soon as he turns his head. He can’t afford to do that. He gauges the chance anyway. How much time it’ll take for the first one to reach them if he turns to see her. Just a little time, one last time.

* * *

Her head dipped, nuzzled against his chest. His hand was tired, not quite awake yet, running through her long tresses. He hummed through his chest. He knew it made her laugh. 

“We probably _ should _ start back soon,” she sighed. Reluctant. 

“It’s pretty hot.” 

Her hand reached up, fingers tickling his neck. He swiped at them. She caught it easily, kept his hand in hers. 

“So much to do. We can’t afford to dally.” 

“We can dally a little.” 

She’d taught him that word. Dally.

She was silent. “But not now. I know we can’t.” 

His smile dropped. It was back before she could see it. A little more tired. “Maybe not.” 

Her laugh fluttered against him. Silent again. He could feel her heart in his chest. 

“Link?” 

"Yeah."

“...Can’t we stay awhile longer?”

* * *

That lavender, that gold. That perfect emerald green.

The field roars. The Sword’s in his hands. 

“Get behind me.” 


End file.
